Abstract
The speed of a bacteria, which uses a rotating helical flagellum to produce propulsion, is calculated by solving the full Navier-Stokes equations. This rotating flagellum is treated by sliding mesh technique. The control volume method is utilized for discretizing the equations, and the first order scheme for the convection term, the second order scheme for the diffusion term, and the first order implicit scheme for the unsteady term. The speed is estimated by converting the kinetic energy produced by the rotating flagellum. It is found that higher rotational speed gives more conversion loss to the speed of bacteria, and that the order of the speed estimated by the present method agrees with that by the boundary element method with the Stokes approximation.
